


take these broken wings and learn to fly

by temptingfates



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aerialist Natasha Romanoff, Also in which Em has to research medical conditions, Alternate Universe - Circus, And hospitals in Germany, Angst, Circus Performer Clint Barton, Comfort/Angst, Everything goes to hell in a handbasket within the first five minutes, F/M, Inspired by a damn reality talent competition, Partnership, Really mostly just, The life of a writer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:30:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7351759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temptingfates/pseuds/temptingfates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Some people felt that they fit in a different city from where they were raised, others felt that they belonged in other countries and societies; some felt that their true home was with another person and others knew that they would never find a greater sense of belonging than when alone. Some people were designed to live in the caverns of the mountains, some on coastal linings, some in the heart of cities and others in the outskirts of the woods. And Natasha belonged in the air.</i>
</p><p>Or, Natasha is an aerialist who loses everything except for a strong hatred of Berlin, and Clint Barton is willing to learn how to give her back what she needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. act one / the ticket

**Author's Note:**

> Someone should forbid me from watching television ever again, because it inspires the most damning things that I just can't not write. Also, let's not worry about being technical, okay?
> 
> We're not a technical bunch around here.

Natalia loved the air.

Some people felt that they fit in a different city from where they were raised, others felt that they belonged in other countries and societies; some felt that their true home was with another person and others knew that they would never find a greater sense of belonging than when alone. Some people were designed to live in the caverns of the mountains, some on coastal linings, some in the heart of cities and others in the outskirts of the woods. And Natalia belonged in the air.

She wasn’t sure when that had dawned onto her, when whatever presence had ripped the veil from her eyes and shown her the truth of what place she really held in the world: dangling above crowds of people with their jaws dropped and eyes wide as she twirled and flew and spun through the air, her invisible wings spread open with the pride of the Bolshoi’s finest draped around her like a cape.

Part of her accredited to Ivan; his position in the Bolshoi Circus had placed the opportunity right in the palm of her hand and her little fist closing over it tightly. The other part knew she owed him nothing, and certainly not credit. Everything she had worked for, everything she had earned had come her way because of herself and herself alone. The accolades, the titles she had earned, the applause and the awe and the pride she had earned; no, she wasn’t the best of the best without reason, and it certainly wasn’t because Ivan or any of his associates lifted her off the shelf and onto her pedestal in the sky.

Natalia was her own woman the minute her feet left the ground.

* * *

She was convinced that she’d experienced the worst moment in her life approximately seventeen times before; in no means was her life anything close to a walk in the park to begin with, but there had been lots of close experiences where she thought there was simply no lower that she could sink, lying on the bathroom floor with the tile floor underneath her cheek the most comfortable thing she deserved in those few pauses of misery. Living as an aerial performer in Ivan’s division, Natalia was certain that she’d seen everything, walked through hell and back a couple of times over and there was nothing that could possibly be worse than some of the things she’d experienced.

That was _before_ her show in Berlin.

Berlin was the first show she’d agreed to do ever since joining Ivan that wasn’t at home in Russia, and it was the biggest of her career at that point. Nerves had never been a qualm in Natalia’s realm; most of her performances had trouble getting her to bat an eye, but there was something about stepping foot in the theater that started to rub her the wrong way, exposing nerves even she didn’t know she had. Ivan dismissed it as though it was nothing and all but pushed her out onto the stage himself.

Everything had been going fine, perfectly according to plan right down to every patron in their proper seat and the show not a beat off schedule, perhaps _too_ perfect up until the cradle.

Korean cradles had never been Natalia’s particular favorite – she was good at it, that had never been a question as her abilities were never below par; it was the partners she’d always had that never gave her any ease. In her entire time rehearsing with the cradle, she’d had at least one decent partner with her, swinging her through the air, and James had disappeared no sooner than he’d met her down on the ground after their first run through. The other half of the duo was a steady rotation of sub-basement aerialists, partners that Natalia could trust about as far as she could throw them, much less than they could throw her and promise catching her should the worst happen.

“You will be _spectacular_ , Natalia,” Ivan whispered in her ear in the midst of the darkness before she returned to the stage, the rhinestones on her leotard still catching bits and pieces of the light underneath her. Natalia kept her eyes ahead, staring at the silhouette of the cradle as she stepped back onto the stage.

She’d swallowed deeply before joining hands with her partner, his face burning in the spotlight’s gleam that she could barely catch the whites of his eyes before she felt any purchase beneath the balls of her feet disappear and replaced with nothing but the empty air around them. She never looked down, not once – Ivan’s target rule for training his aerialists – and instead tried to focus on the neat grip her hands made with her partner’s, sealed tight and unwavering.

_Back, forth._

_Back, forth, up in the air sideways, split._

_Back, forth._

_Back, forth._

_Back, forth, release._

Natalia knew the minute he jerked her forward too hard, nearly throwing her out into her back tuck that those exposed nerves from earlier had been uncovered for a reason, and it didn’t quite register why until she saw the pair of hands reaching out to her falling a bit too short and the horrified gasps of the crowd echoing in her ears and the entire world going black with a sickening thud.

Everything else that she remotely remembered was based off the testimonies of people surrounding her, and even then it was as though the words swam together, collided awkwardly, and didn’t make sense. It was like pulling a specific shade out of watercolors that had unintentionally ran together trying to fully comprehend the situation, what with the million different versions of the story and her brain floating somewhere above the clouds with all of the morphine flowing through her veins.

In theory, it was simple. She’d fallen nearly three stories straight to the ground, and it was a miracle that she wasn’t paralyzed from the neck down. The doctors – of which there were three, all different specialties and all equally amazed and worried by her – were still unsure of whether or not she’d have complications walking, if she’d even be able to walk again. Natalia had nearly forgotten she had legs, what with the numbness she felt coming from that general region thanks to the heavy painkillers.

Her response was to nestle into her pillow, succumbing to her medicine and slipping back into sleep.

It was only when the morphine started to slow its drip into her and she reentered the land of the conscious that things took a darker turn. The neck brace’s presence was the first thing she registered, wanting to rip the suffocating device off of her throat the minute she realized she could barely turn her head without the hindrance of _something_. The nurses weren’t too particularly pleased about that one. They also weren’t pleased with Natalia’s unwillingness to cooperate when they offered her their assisting hands in any subject area; clearly, they hadn’t gotten the memo that Natalia Romanova would rather die than admit a certain degree of vulnerability. Never once had she accepted an ounce of help that someone thought she needed, she was the only help she’d need and that was that.

The doctors then decided that they were perfectly fine with sedating her in order to guarantee her willingness to comply. That was the same day it was also decided Natalia would need restraints in the sedation process, as she forced her body to move like it once did when it was clear she was living with someone else’s bones, and the only moments they knew she was in any pain was when the tears fell thanks to frustration’s shove.

Her days were filled with endless white tiles and a paper gown, her fingers moving ever so slightly as she picked at the sheets on her hospital bed. It was all the movement that she could coerce her body to fulfill. It was ironic, how quick and cruel the world was to strip a person of the very thing that they relied on, the one thing that had equipped her for surviving in her environment. Agility, litheness, _movement_ was how she operated. It was how Natalia had paved her way in the world she lived in, it was how she had become the best of the best.

Ivan’s words haunted her mind, ringing in her ears amidst the low hum of machines and air-conditioning in her room. _If she wasn’t the best, then she was the worst._

Natalia tried to suppress the tears, at least until it was late at night when she knew she wouldn’t have a nurse rotation coming through her room for a few more hours and there were no peeking eyes able to spot her shedding her façade and melting into sheer vulnerability. Or until they allowed her to wash her own face.

Then there was an excuse for the severe redness along her cheekbones and in her eyes.

They asked her questions like how her pain was that day on a scale from a one to ten, one being hardly-there and ten being the worst pain she’d experienced in her life. They liked to count in emotional pain as well, since there was apparently no way in hell she could survive something like she had and not be the least bit scarred by it. Her answer was always five, even on the days when she was so frustrated she could have turned the room upside down in a heartbeat or her limbs were such dead weights that she couldn’t tell if her bones had been replaced with lead or if they were even there at all.

Natalia was always a five. Right in between, and she was.

She was right in between having an emotional breakdown and giving up entirely.

Her sanity had been compromised very early on, and while she’d tried to cling to the shreds she had left over the days, gradually Natalia had decided there was no point in attempting to remain sane. No one around here was anyways, she’d learned; everyone was tired and fueling on caffeine and on the brink of some insanity themselves. There were never-ending circles of routines that never varied, the loneliness of the white walls and glaring lights that threatened to send her out of her head and the lack of legitimate company plaguing her, the paper sheets and newspapers stuffed inside pillows (or so it seemed, Natalia recognized a strong similarity between the two) meant to bring her comfort but failed at doing such, and then there was the damning realization that she couldn’t fucking _move_. It was like booking a vacation in her own personal hell. Really, it was impossible _not_ to feel deranged.

And then, every moment felt like she was one step closer to being released only to realize she was stumbling three steps backwards. Hence her desire to just throw in the towel.

There were long discussions about rehabilitation plans, discussions that were mostly one-sided and Natalia tuned out, resuming to rubbing her fingers against the fabric of the sheets of her hospital bed until she forgot what it truly felt like and the only thing she could feel was similar to white noise and utter confusion resting at the pad of her fingers. They asked her more questions about what she would like to do about rehabilitation, as she was not a citizen of Germany by any means and that transportation would be complicated with her injuries and that perhaps they would be better off to wait until she was showing signs of improvement, and it was like she was drowning in words she wasn’t even hearing right.

Natalia figured that she had at least earned one question of her own.

“When can I perform again?” she asked, the words catapulting out of her mouth in fluent German before she had the chance to process them. Staring back at her was the puzzled look of who was now the fourth doctor in her care, staring at her as though when she’d fallen, the result was brain damage as opposed to spinal trauma.

“What do you mean, perform?” he repeated, Natalia’s teeth grinding down as she’d so often done when her patience started slipping with the medical staff that suffocated her at all hours of the day.

“Perform,” she spat out. “I’m an aerialist. I perform. When?”

The look she received was supposed to suffice as answer enough, but Natalia wasn’t having it. Being bedridden for weeks on end had only shortened the resilience of her temper, snapping her slow burning fuse clean in half. Her doctor finally verbalized the thoughts he’d expressed on his face. “Perform? Miss Romanova, you will be lucky if you can ever _walk_ properly again.”

Not the answer she was looking for, as she pressed again. “ _When_?”

His lips formed a thin line, knuckles gripping tighter to the clipboard. “Miss Romanova,” he said slowly. “I understand your career is important to you, but I’m afraid that recuperating from an injury like this doesn’t take a few weeks or months. It takes years, _decades_ in some scenarios, and even then, that doesn’t mean you will ever see a full recovery.” Another deep breath, long exhale, like this was troubling him more than it was her. “I’m terribly sorry.”

Natalia had always despised apologies, even when they sounded like they meant something.

* * *

 

She knew Ivan wouldn’t be pleased learning that she couldn’t return to Moscow for performances. She had no idea how in the hell word hadn’t traveled that his precious Natalia was bedridden with little control over her limbs and would supposedly never perform in this lifetime. Returning to the Bolshoi would only result in a certain amount of hell to pay; she’d been Ivan’s lap dog for so long that she knew exactly what happened to those who were no longer fit to work. If you didn’t serve a purpose, then you had no purpose, and if you had no purpose, you were disposed of.

It was effective, weeding out those who had withered instead of blooming. The Bolshoi Circus was a garden, and Ivan liked to prune every two weeks. Effective, he had told her as she watched wordlessly. _It’s effective._

For Natalia, however, it would be signing her name on her own death certificate. Hell, if Ivan could find his way into the hospital and send a dose of potassium chloride through her IV to kill her, she knew he would have by now.

She now had no place in the world.

Instead of sending in her two weeks’ notice and a neat resignation letter to Ivan and company, she requested to receive rehabilitation under the name of Natasha Romanoff with the desire for a transfer to the United States as soon as they could strap her to a board and ship her out through customs.

For once, the hospital staff didn’t meet her with resistance. They obliged once they saw the hollow look in her eyes.

* * *

 

She met James Rhodes about halfway through her rehabilitation in Munich.

The two of them were as close to as birds of a feather as one could find in rehabilitation; she had fallen three stories in the middle of a show, he had fallen god only _knows_ how many stories in a mission with a faulty parachute. Looking at Rhodes was a humbling reminder that she could at least feel her legs on a good day. She could only watch in secondhand discomfort as he stumbled and fell, trying to pick himself up off the ground. 

She introduced herself as Natasha, reminding herself that she was no longer Natalia the aerialist and the shining star of the Bolshoi Circus or Natalia the former aerialist who had a shitty partner in a show in Berlin and fell three stories and suffered spinal trauma from it, or even Natalia who was trying to successfully fall off the face of the earth so she would never have to face her former employer again. She was merely Natasha who had just suffered from a nasty fall and needed rehab.

He insisted she call him Rhodey.

Rhodes – or Rhodey, as he’d requested (the name felt juvenile on her tongue as she tried it on for size, figuring out how something that was clearly bestowed upon him by someone who cared for him could be delivered in the same lighthearted manner by someone like her, who didn’t understand the concept of ebullience even if it kicked her in the ass and pushed her three stories to the ground) was curious about her, curious in the way that should have made her hackles stand on edge and send her building defenses castle high. It was his conversational behavior that gave her an ounce of ease, telling her his story before offering the floor to her.

Each time she would politely decline, telling him that she would explain it at a later date. Instead of seeing an angry flash over his face for not receiving what he had asked of her or what he wanted, his skin wrinkled in the corners by his eyes as he smiled and told her, ‘ _some other time’_.

Instead, if the opportunity for mutual interest being shared and birthing a conversation would come about, the topic would always be about being in the air. It never failed. Rhodey loved his job working for the Air Force, and Natasha had loved her job as an aerialist. She lived vicariously through the stories he told, feeling almost like a child hanging on the edge of his every word with building anticipation and the satisfying sigh at the thought of being back where her feet never touched the ground and only the open air surrounded her.

Whether she realized it or not, it was somewhat written on her face that she’d gotten herself into this predicament doing something she loved. By the time she was ready to tell him, he had already started to gather the pieces.

The words fell out of her mouth one day during a break, the two of them sitting in the floor with water bottles clutched in their hands and enough weakness exuded between the both of them that it made it a bit awkward for conversation. “I was in the circus,” she found herself saying out of nowhere, the words falling too fast for her to catch them and reel them back in.

“I’ve got a friend who runs one of those,” Rhodey replied. For a minute, Natasha felt her entire body go rigid – _was this one of Ivan’s little schematics? Had she been foolish enough to believe that he had just left her for dead like he had and not keep tabs on that status?_ – until Rhodey continued talking and put those fears to rest. “Got quite a few friends employed under him. Solid bunch, you’d like them.”

Natasha wanted to advise him not to hold his breath over that.  

She stared down at her hands awkwardly, her eyes finding no other place to settle as she didn’t really want to focus on her company and let him see the shame she was still clinging onto there looking back at him. “I um, I was doing a show in Berlin. I’m an aerialist, so…I’m in the air a lot.” Her English was still rusty, even though it was the second language she’d been taught as a child; knowing English was a priority, but practicing wasn’t. “We were doing the cradle and things went wrong, my partner didn’t catch me. Three stories straight to the ground, and here I am.”

For a moment, more silence engulfed them. Natasha didn’t want to lift her eyes, didn’t want to see what was certainly pity staring back at her; she’d gotten enough of that during her small period of time spent in hell. The reassuring hand that came clapping down on her shoulder startled her, green eyes jerking upwards. Instead of pity, she was met with a look of not pity, but an almost understanding. _Right._

“I’m sorry.” This apology didn’t sound like the same one she’d heard a dozen times before from all of her doctors or from her therapist or from anyone who knew what had happened to her. It wasn’t something that he said out of a lack of anything to say or because that was the appropriate thing to tell someone when they’d gone through something as traumatic as she had. It was because he knew she’d lost, she had had the thing that turned her world on its axis snatched out from underneath her and was trying to find a new balance and that he acknowledged she was still struggling to find a footing. He knew this because he had, too.

A twisted sort of smile started to tug at the corners of her lips. “So am I.”

Natalia had never understood the concept of friendship. Natasha, on the other hand, was perhaps seeing the glimpses of such. 

* * *

 

Rhodey was heading back to the States, and Natasha suddenly found herself doing something she hardly ever did – she _begged_.

She sounded nearly ridiculous as she tripped over her words, desperate to spit them all out before he had the moment to turn away and tune her out. The States was her chance at an escape, to truly get away from Ivan and to start her life over. She’d never had the opportunity to have a clean slate, to reinvent herself beyond the person that the Bolshoi had molded her into and that Ivan had forced inside a small box on his trophy shelf.

Of course, that wasn’t what she told Rhodey. Instead, she stumbled around what she couldn’t tell him, slipping from English to Russian and back again and her sub-conscience was shrouding its face in shame at how much of a mess she’d made of herself. “Please, Rhodes – “

“ – I told you, it’s Rhodey – “

“ – fine, _Rhodey_ ; I need to go to the States. It’s – you know, it’s the only chance I have. Of starting over.” A pause, and then she quickly added. “After my, um, accident.”

Ultimately, there would be a lot of unknowns going over to North America. Rehabilitation was obviously the first step (according to her therapist, a middle-aged German doctor who smiled too much for someone who had to help her figure out how to move again, she was nowhere near finished thanks to her many setbacks, all courtesy of her stubborn behavior) and then there were the many, many other things that would pile on top of it. Where she’d live, what she’d do with herself in the off time, how she’d manage to get by – it was enough to send even the most prepared of them all for a tailspin. Natasha didn’t care. She just needed that one way ticket far, far away from Ivan and the Bolshoi Circus and everything about her life up until then.

One eyebrow was cocked, trying to read around the gaps in her pleas and figure out what she was really trying to run away from. “I’ll see what Tony can do,” was his final response.

Two weeks later, Natasha found herself sitting on a plane next to Rhodey with anxiety building in her chest and her hands folded in her lap, clutching to the other so tight that her knuckles were turning white. For someone who loved the sky, she didn’t like planes. _Despised_ them was perhaps the better term.

“I owe you,” she mumbled quietly to him, somewhere over the Atlantic.

In his eyes, he was nearly begging for her to retract her words. Natasha sensed that perhaps he didn’t like for others to go the extra mile for him as a response to his good deeds, that he was the type who did without expecting payment. He was one who made sacrifices and did for others because he wanted to and wore them around his shoulders like a medal of honor. He offered her a hint of a smile as he spoke.

“Come with me to Tony’s next show in New York, and you can consider us even.”


	2. act two / the encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly thought no one (other than Drew) would take interest in this, so thank you to anyone who left kudos, bookmarked, and a special thank you to beneathground, apoptosis, itsreallynotthatcomplicated and iskeirim for your exceptionally lovely comments! No time to waste, so we shall jump right into it. Onwards!

Tony Stark was nothing shy of a whirlwind, something Natasha discovered on her first day in America.

He had been waiting for Rhodey on the tarmac, aviator sunglasses perched high on his nose and nervously adjusting and readjusting the tie that was resting uncomfortably against the scruff on his neck, a tic Natasha had picked up on the very moment she set eyes on him as he leaned up against what was presumably his ride, a black car that looked as though it had rolled right off the assembly line and the paint had dried on his way over. She felt rather out of place as Tony went straight to embrace his friend, the usual clap on the back and perhaps a lingering moment, one that said he was glad to see his friend was still alive and breathing. After all, that was about as good as the two of them could get, alive and breathing.

Any sentimentality he’d had immediately melted off his face the second his shielded eyes set their sights on Natasha. “Well well, if it isn’t Rhodey’s little Red.” His voice was a melody, singing amusedly as he took a sweeping glance at her. She was still sitting – in some godforsaken _wheelchair_ , because breaking your spine was practically a sentence to a seat for an immeasurable amount of time, but his eyes moved over her, analyzing her from the red hair all the way down to what were at best glorified slippers on her bandaged ankles like she was some sort of code. She’d give him that, he was _very_ observant.

She figured she’d prove to be quite the competition at that feat.

“Natasha,” she replied coolly, Russian accent heavy as she introduced herself of her own accord, chin level with that of Tony Stark. “Natasha Romanoff.”

“And surely you know who I am,” was his overly cock-sure response. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Rhodey’s own pair of eyes close, head tilting back in exasperation.

“I’m afraid not.” And with a single blow to the chink in his armor, Tony Stark’s face fell like a shattered mirror, shooting Rhodey a glare that would have pierced like glass into flesh.

Rhodey lifted his hands in mock arrest. “I told her that you were my guy getting me back home to the States, and that your name was Tony Stark.”

“And you had a nine hour flight on your hands, you couldn’t have filled the empty silence between you two with the crasher course in all things Tony Stark?” Tony whined, staring at his friend in bewilderment.

The smile on Rhodey’s face was mimicry at its finest, echoing Natasha as complacency bubbled out of his throat. “I’m afraid not.” 

That was when Natasha knew she was going to enjoy it in the States.

* * *

Any of the backburner fears that she’d left to burn in her pursuit to get to America came up to the forefront of her mind only for them to be dismissed with the nonchalant wave of Tony Stark’s hand, something that left an unsettling feeling in her stomach.

Owing Rhodey was one thing. She actually was somewhat fond of Rhodey. Tony Stark was an entirely different story.

Being the friend that Rhodey had alluded to once upon a time about owning his own circus (Circus Stark, the completely unoriginal name she should have seen staring her right in the face; Rhodey shuddered when he mentioned the brief week when Tony thought Cirque du Stark was the winning idea) meant that Tony was bathing in dollar bills and change. It was something he certainly didn’t lock away in a closet for someone else to stumble upon, either. 

He was grandiose in every meaning of the word, and she had yet to figure out how to interpret his kindness. Sure, he had nearly forced her wheelchair into what was apparently _his_ apartment complex (money was no object in the world of Tony Stark) and yelled for a Pepper she had yet to see to run and pick out some clothes for her. Even when she’d tried to make a sly escape, he met her at the elevator with a smirk that was enough for her cheeks to turn the same shade as her hair. She was unsure as to whether he was simply extending a hospitable hand, if he was merely doing this for Rhodey’s sake, or if he’d quickly taken a liking to evoking a reaction from her.

Either way, escaping the clutches of Tony Stark would be quite the challenge.

Especially after discovering the person behind the name of Pepper and realizing that she really, really liked her.

* * *

Natasha had never been a spectator at a circus before, only a performer, so this was a strange scenario to be placed in.

Rhodey intended to hold Natasha to her end of the deal unless for some reason she died in her sleep, and Natasha intended to pay back her debt to him in any way she knew how (she wouldn’t, however, pay Tony Stark back, even if he _did_ sort of deserve it, because all that would result in was the inflation of his ego, and it was already worthy of its own zip code). So she put on whatever she thought would be virtually acceptable (and was hanging up in the closet) and plastered on a smile, ready for a night of paying off debts and enjoyments only if something quite rascally happened to the namesake of the show.

She caught on quickly that this was very much so an Americanized version of the circus she had once been head over heels in love with – now, she was merely stale and standoffish to the concept. Many more children and loud noises, a lighthearted atmosphere floating over her head; not the same haunting, grave feeling she was used to washing over her the minute she stepped foot near a circus ring. In Russia, they were considered an art form, entertainment be damned, they were meant to be _perfect_. This was merely recreational in its paled comparison.

“Not what you were expecting?” Rhodey asked, swiveling around in his wheelchair – Natasha simply refused to use her wheelchair unless her new rehabilitation therapist, Happy (what was _with_ Stark and his juvenile nicknames) practically strapped her to the seat, but made her swear on the grave that she would at least walk with assistance, so she was now Rhodey’s escort. She had barely realized her culture shock was the only thing written on her face, cheeks beginning to color. After taking another sweeping glance of the place, she cast her eyes down towards Rhodey, lips pursed.

“It’s…different,” was the response she carefully selected. Her world and this one were two entirely parallel universes, but the minute she started she knew she would never stop. Not that Rhodey would mind; he’d pretty much coaxed her to tell her story from day one, but it wasn’t something she was positive that she’d have a capping point for. The words would probably spill over her lips and bubble for heaven only knew how long, the already endless list of differences she’d noticed since stepping foot inside the arena and the show had yet to start.

Rhodey merely smiled.

The buzz of conversation in the surrounding audience was beginning to send Natasha’s head for a spin. This was something she’d escaped months ago and it was like slipping on someone else’s skin, stepping into full-blown déjà vu. She recognized the atmosphere, she had thrived off of it what seemed like a lifetime ago but in reality was only a few months’ time and now it was like entering a world that had continued on while hers was on pause. In her head she was calculating how far away they were from show time judging by the lights, the way people continued to fill in seats, something programmed in her she wasn’t positive would ever grow rusted.

Her mind was cogs whirring, computing and tedious as it moved on its own accord, the patterns it was used to falling in step with, something that _he_ had embedded deep within her that she could no longer remember a moment when it seemed her genetic code didn’t include that routine.

Desperate to shake her mind from the iron jaws of Ivan’s garden, she turned to Rhodey and did something that someone had neglected to give her the manual on perfecting – starting conversation. “You said a lot of your friends were employed under Tony?” she asked, voice cutting through the silence in their vicinity almost a bit too nervous.

Rhodey, as always, met her question with a warm look and no qualms about casually conversing. “Yeah; most of ‘em are performing tonight, if Tony’s not rearranged a damn thing. And I’m assuming he hasn’t.” He cleared his throat, beginning to flip through them in his mental records.

“There’s Steve – or, well, Captain Rogers, he’s the ringmaster. Tony was going to take that up as well as head honcho, Pepper forbade him from putting even more attention on himself. You’ve got Thor, who’s our own Miss Electra; I still don’t know how the guy does it. I think Tony said he can take up to about twenty seven thousand volts of electricity?” That felt a bit sideshow to Natasha — nothing they ever would have put up in front of the Bolshoi, but still impressive seeing as how it was death defying in the most literal sense there was. “Bruce Banner, he’s a lot of the behind the show stuff, keeps Tony sane, all that. Then you have the twins; Pietro Maximoff, pretty much the go-to guy when it comes down to anything involving balance. Tightrope, stilts, trapeze, he’ll do it if he puts himself up to it. Kid’s gotten himself into some sticky situations with it before. His sister Wanda is Tony’s darling fire dancer, can do all kinds of crazy shit with fire. Don’t know how she does it either. Then there’s Clint Barton; he’s impalement arts as he so likes to ostentatiously call it. Never misses.” Natasha knew _that_ term. Knife throwing, archery, all of it ended with someone being a human target and praying to whatever god they believed in that the person aiming wouldn’t miss. Rhodey cracked a smile. “You’ll like him. Reminds me a lot of you.”

Somehow, Natasha thoroughly doubted that.

The timer inside her mind slowly began to trickle to the last few grains of sand to slip through, and just as she had predicted, the environment around them began to change. People were returning to their seats, the lights were starting their gradual fade, the hum of chatter was beginning to level out right before the grand drop off at the sound of a voice over the intercom. Perhaps there weren’t that many differences between the Bolshoi and the Americans, after all.

That, or she just had an impeccable internal clock.

Her mind was suddenly jolted back into a circus headspace as the show began.

It became clear to her that while both owned the circus title, the Bolshoi and whatever Stark had concocted were merely railroad tracks; they would run parallel to one another and never intersect. Occasionally, Rhodey would look over and ask for more context behind something and while she could give at most a little insight on the various topics he had questions about, she was ultimately at a loss (she had absolutely no answers for whatever Thor had just done, that had been a new experience for her as well and left her stunned). The differences that stood between the world she was accustomed to and this one were polar opposites, indicative of one another but on the whole, different worlds. The Bolshoi didn’t have the multi-talented Pietro who could do just about anything as Rhodey had promised, they didn’t have their own Wanda, girl on fire, they didn’t have the Amazing Hawkeye Clint Barton shooting at people with his bow and arrow, his target. Natasha found herself picking apart each particular act and the ways that they ran, from the techniques to the presence each performer had when the spotlight found him. She had been conditioned to Ivan’s incredibly high standards and nothing less, and it was peculiar to see people who did virtually the same thing and yet seemed to lack the same poise, the same discipline she had been programmed to carry herself with. It was clear to her that they did this for a profession just as she had, but there was a striking contrast between herself and these people. They did this because they wanted to, and she had done it in order to survive.

* * *

Circus performers in America were a lot friendlier than they were in Russia.

Shuffled back into the wings of the show by Tony Stark – a practice that would have gotten your hand chopped off back home – she was swept up in an after show ritual that seemed to move around her, and she was merely a spectator. Every few moments or so, her muscles would tense, ready to move to take off a costume or start removing makeup, and she had to remind herself, very forcefully, that this was no longer her life. She distracted herself with the many vibrant characters swirling around, clearly bemused by the sight of a new face clutching onto the handles of Rhodey’s chair.

Most of them were just thrilled to see Rhodey, and she didn’t mind that. She was getting quite used to being folded back in the curtains, making a home in the shadows away from the light that had previously been the only place she knew living in. They each surprised her when they took notice of her, smiles on their faces as they tried to acquaint themselves with the strange redhead. And there was a genuine interest in doing so as well, not merely for saving face, either. She was used to that sort of behavior, not an explicit kindness they were thrusting towards her with their open arms.

First was Steve Rogers, practically there by the entrance waiting to embrace Rhodey with a welcome homecoming. He’d noticed Natasha as soon as he noticed Rhodey, already taking interest. “Who’s your friend?” he asked Rhodey, nodding in her direction.

Rhodey seemed glad to be the middle-man, making all the introductions on her behalf. For someone who had grown up in a circus setting, Natasha was slightly intimidated by all of the new characters in her midst. They all felt very sideshow to her, nothing she had ever been accustomed to, and it was hard pulling words from the back of her throat that would even remotely come across as the same sociable demeanor they were exemplifying. It was easier letting Rhodey talk.

He gave the same introduction each time, whether it was to an overly polite Steve Rogers, larger than life Thor Odinson who _definitely_ had a Scandinavian accent, the polar-opposite-of-one-another twins Wanda and Pietro, or to a rather shy and awkward Bruce Banner. He warmly presented Natasha, who had seemingly forgotten how to use her voice in the heart of trying to read each of them that passed her by. At most, she offered them all a smile, perhaps a few words about how nice it was to meet them, standard procedure in debuts.

Thor had been simply ecstatic when he recognized her Russian accent, and had to be dragged away by one perturbed Pepper Potts, who was eager for him to get out of his costume so they could do inventory and go the hell home, her words.  

And then Clint Barton came strolling along, twirling an arrow between his fingers casually and whistling, already changed and in much more casual attire, clearly nothing amiss in his small little bubble. That was, until, he caught a sight of Natasha and her flaming red hair – enough to catch anyone’s eye, really, but this time, enough to completely catch him off guard.

He didn’t even notice Rhodey, it seemed.

“Whoa, new girl alert,” he whistled under his breath, eyes lighting up with intrigue as he approached the two of them.

“Yes, hello Clint, it’s nice to see you again! _Nice to see you too, Rhodey, I missed you while you were overseas fighting for our country, how have you been?_ I’ve been fine Clint, thank you for asking!” Clint Barton rolled his eyes, still twirling his arrow as he shot Rhodey a glare.

“Yeah, yeah, welcome home, lovely having you back here with us. Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing a plus one?”

Rhodey shrugged. “I needed someone to clarify what the hell was going on.” That only seemed to draw him in closer, wanting more answers than Rhodey was willing to provide.

“You know what we do, Rhodey,” was Clint Barton’s point, staring at him with an accusatory gleam in his eyes. “We’re a circus, not like we’re some hard-to-understand abstract concept of math or some shit.”

“But she’s _lived_ it.” The golden words rolled off his tongue and it was like he had announced Christmas was arriving earlier this year.

“You’re kidding,” he muttered, another low whistle under his breath. “You were in the circus?”

His eyes were locked on Natasha, and she realized Rhodey wasn’t about to answer that question for her. She nodded, and the elation on Clint Barton’s face spread like a wildfire. “Russia,” was the only explanation she gave.

That seemed to impress him, face lighting up with genuine regard. “Really?” he asked.

Normally it wasn’t within her to start disclosing details about life back home. It had taken her a solid month and a half of being around Rhodey every single day to tell him about being in the circus. Perhaps it was the fact she was standing in the same vein of environment that she was so used to and it had taken her back to an entirely different place where she felt at ease, at home, and it was nearly second nature talking about it, or maybe it was because this was someone who understood. Either way, she found herself talking more than she had ever since the show had ended.

“Ever heard of the Bolshoi Circus?” The simple nod of his head, and mixed feelings arose in her chest. He either knew exactly who she was or was very read-up on all of the world’s circuses. “I was their star aerialist before I left. I think I was thirteen or so when I got recruited, been doing shows with them up until, well, now.”

“I’ll…uh, leave you two be,” Rhodey muttered to no one in particular, somewhat astounded at Natasha’s sudden change in character and his lips beginning to curl up in a smile as he rolled off to presumably go find Tony or Pepper. Or maybe Steve; the two of them had seemed to be rather close acquaintances if her assumptions were anything close to the bull’s-eye.

The sound of Clint Barton’s voice brought her back to the present.   

“Aerialist, huh?” He took a very obvious sweeping glance at her, like he should have seen the answer written somewhere near her neckline on the t-shirt she’d settled on earlier. She knew what he was doing, trying to scope out her body type behind what she was wearing. To see if she was built the way he was used to seeing aerialists be. She had a theory that she would have put that stereotype in his head to shame. “Anything in particular?”

Natasha shook her head, tendrils of red hair falling in her eyes. “You name it, I did it.” Clint Barton was eager to test that theory.

“Silks?”

“Did it.”

“Trapeze?”

“Did it.”

“Straps?”

“Like I said, _did it_.”

He seemed rather amused with her impressive repertoire; the way his eyes had widened when she’d admitted she’d nearly done it all gave away the Americans and their specialty factors, how there was a niche for everyone except for Pietro. Arms folding neatly over his chest, he cocked an eyebrow at her. “Ever tried the cradle?”

It was as though someone had injected dry ice into her bloodstream, numbing her legs on cue and the rest of her body frozen to the point where it was burning her from the inside out.

“Um, I – uh, yeah,” she stammered out, her breezy confidence slipping through the same crack in her spine the fall had caused. Something about being revisited by the ghost of the Korean cradle was enough to knock her prideful ass back into the wheelchair that compromised all her dignity. In a fashion Rhodey surely would have been proud of, Clint Barton’s eyebrow only quirked higher, inviting her to continue. “That’s…um, well, that was kinda how I ended up here.” His features quickly morphed into misperception. “I – “

“Accident, Barton,” Tony interrupted, clapping a hand on Clint Barton’s shoulder. He took only a second to steal a look at Tony before those stormy eyes locked back on her, asking more questions than her nurses had the first few days of her being back in consciousness. Even if she wanted to give him the explanation, Tony beat her to the punch yet again. “She had a real nasty accident. Broke her spine, met Rhodey in rehab while he was in Munich. Took a real liking to her, asked if I could pull a few strings and get her over here. Call me the master marionette operator.”

Natasha shot him a glare, while Clint Barton took on the semblance a fish out of water.

“You _broke_ your spine?”

Tony continued to steal the words from the edge of her tongue, and while he was steadily driving her up a wall, she was almost thankful he simply couldn’t resist sticking his nose in her business. Spared her from reliving her injury off her tongue again and again. “Sure did; fell three stories straight to the ground like a rock. They thought it was a damn miracle she wasn’t paralyzed from the neck down, much less at all.” Natasha was now the one gaping at Tony, her mind working at double its normal pace trying to conclude how in the _hell_ he knew that, since she hadn’t even told that to Rhodey.

He smiled, all pearly white teeth dazzling at her. “I looked at your files.”

Well, that certainly explained it.

Clint Barton began to wave his hand around in the air, dismissing Tony from the conversation. He left with both eyebrows raised and a suggestive grin meant for the both of them, and internally, Natasha winced. Leave it to Tony to make virtually anything unbelievably awkward.

“You broke your spine?” he asked Natasha again, much quieter this time around. Most of the shock had subsided from his voice and was now saturated with concern. “How…I don’t – “

“Me neither,” she admitted, stopping him before he had the chance to stumble knee-deep through a plethora of empathetic words that would never come. They never did. “Tony said it himself. Kind of a miracle I’m even alive.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

About the time that Natasha was beginning to feel herself relax, truly start to enjoy herself, Rhodey was wheeling back over to her and informing her that Tony had unofficially set them a curfew, seeing as how they were still trucking nicely through rehab. This seemed to disappoint Clint Barton, not bothering to hide his pout.

“Relax, Barton,” Rhodey teased. “You’ll see me soon enough.”

Clint Barton scoffed, rolling his eyes as he gave Rhodey’s chair a nudge. “Yeah, whatever.” His eyes found Natasha again, a stormy blue-grey desperate to know more, not fully satisfied and hungry for something about her, something else. Fish on a hook, he was. He _certainly_ hadn’t looked at Rhodey like that. “You’ll be around?”

She nodded curtly, her lips spreading out into a thin smile as she grabbed the handles of Rhodey’s wheelchair and turned him around, her new destination the door.

“Never caught your name though,” he called out.

She paused, glancing over her shoulder. “It’s Natasha.”

“Natasha,” Clint Barton repeated, a happy sort of smile on his lips. Like her name was a melody and he was enchanted with how it sounded rolling off his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Clint and Natasha get to know each other, discussing things deeper and darker than the friendly neighborhood clown derangement, and American culture is promptly shoved down Natasha's throat.

**Author's Note:**

> Up next: Clint Barton enters our story, and Natasha Romanoff regrets ever trusting Tony Stark with her life.


End file.
